Cold As Stone
by purefoysgirl
Summary: Originally published on Adult Fanfiction. The Malfoy family has secrets, a strain of madness, and a boy growing up with these difficulties and more to contend with. Rated for violence, be warned! I don't write for children!
1. Cold As Stone

It honestly was aggravating, how one little toad could ruin everything. More, it was shaming to know that the best laid plans could be shattered to naught by that same little toad.

He sighed and cast his disgusted glance from his son to his wife. The boy anxiously watched them, feeling the tension rise in the room. Tempers were a nasty thing in their line, though nothing compared to the insanity that ran in his wife's line. She looked back at him with placid blue eyes, a slight smile curving her full lips. He gave her a tight, joyless smile in return, his eyes promising a world of retribution.

"She punched me square in the nose, father," the boy whined again.

"Then perhaps you should have _punched her back_," he tightly, slowly said, turning his gaze once more on his get. The boy was a teenager now, and almost through those awkward, gangly years that had so plagued him. Handsome, yes—there was little help for it. His breeding was impeccable, though the strength of his parents left him a little weak-willed.

He looked taken aback by the suggestion, though not particularly surprised. Thoughts moiled in his gray eyes, his face slack. Finally, he said, "I couldn't strike her, father. For all that she's an impure excuse for a witch, I could never strike a woman."

"Pity," he said, fingers idly twirling his wineglass. "I had hoped there was more of my personality in you, my son. And a little less of your mother's."

The boy flushed, bright pink on his white cheeks. He had the same white-blond hair as his mother and father. Indeed, the three of them looked so alike they could have all been siblings.

"It _did_ hurt," he murmured, picking at the food on his plate.

"My poor darling," his mother sighed, reaching over to pat his pale hand. A coil of her white-blond hair fell over her shoulder, coming to rest on the ripe swell of her breast when she straightened. He gazed meditatively at it while the boy stared off at his plate.

She gave the boy a languid, loving smile, well pleased with herself. She actually thought all of her spoiling was doing the boy some good. After all of these years, he should've recognized what her coddling was doing, but he'd been busy with other affairs and his son—though cherished—was not foremost on his mind. He'd thought, after all, that he could count on his wife to raise a child to the pureblood standards. Stupid thought.

'_I should have beaten her more often_,' he reflected, eyes idly tracing the coil of hair from her tempting bosom, up the column of her throat, to the softness of her hollow cheeks. She had the patrician, pureblood beauty that he had demanded in a wife—every feature perfection, with the haughty presence of a queen. '_There are many things I should have done_…'

She sensed his gaze and returned it, staring back until she caught his eyes. Even heavily veiled by her surprisingly black lashes, the glittering blue jewels of her eyes were soft and limpid, betraying none of the madness that had so plagued her family for so long. It belonged to the others of her line—those dark of hair and eye, with wild streaks and wild ways and a hunger for things not their own. But she had mad hungers of her own, his Lady wife. Oh, yes, she did.

"You may go now," he murmured, and even though he stared at his wife, the boy knew he was being addressed and acted accordingly.

"Mother, father," he said, standing and bowing a little. He quit the room swiftly, and the echoes of his footsteps reached them as he ran off into the darkness of the manor house.

"What are you about, you sly creature?" he asked, lifting his glass to take a sip of the wine. It filled his mouth with sharp dryness and rich flavor, a welcome distraction from her too-calm eyes.

"Whatever do you mean, darling?" she asked, her voice all innocence. She, too, took a sip of her wine, staining her perfect lips a dark red. Her pink tongue darted out, chasing the film of wine along the curve of her mouth.

"The boy likes this…_halfling_ girl," he said, nose wrinkling with disgust at the mention of such a thing. "And you do nothing to discourage it. If you wish to provoke me into turning on my own heir, I suggest you think again. I may not be the most loving of fathers, but I treasure the boy above all else."

"Isn't it always treasure with you?" she asked, modestly lowering her head as she took another enticing bite of her dinner. "I know you care for our son, darling—you're not a monster."

"Aren't I?" he questioned, tossing back the rest of his wine with one gulp. He plucked his cane up from where it leaned against the massive table and thoughtfully regarded the snake-head tip. The bared fangs and flicking tongue, the intricately wrought scales, the jeweled eyes—beautiful and deadly. Much as his wife would be, should be but let her. Leash-holding, however, was his primary hobby, and the tighter his hold on those around him, the more maliciously happy he was.

He could sense her tense across from him, as she always did when he took such an interest in his seemingly harmless walking stick. He slowly lifted his gaze, a thoughtful frown on his face, and even that could not mar the bred beauty of him. He could see her pulse jumping in her throat, could see her chest rising and falling with her rapid breaths. There was a tell-tale flush to her pale cheeks and a fierce light in her eyes that made him ruefully think he really should have addressed her discipline issues much sooner than this. In moments like these, he recalled how very much he enjoyed the strange bond that they shared—indeed, had shared since they were little better than awkward adolescents making fumbling attempts to explore one another.

"What did you think I would do?" he lowly asked, his voice dangerously soft. He leaned towards her as he said it, lifting the cane. He caught her under the jaw with the silver snake head, lifting her chin so that she tilted her head up. "What did you suppose I would do to you?"

"I supposed nothing," she said, her voice calm, her eyes cloudy. "You are as unpredictable as ever, my dearest husband."

"Then this should come as a surprise to you," he slowly whispered. "_Go upstairs_."

"To our chamber?" she inquired, standing gracefully as he pushed her upwards with his cane.

"No," he said, and the smile that curved his fine mouth was predatory, _ravenous_. "_To the Silent Room_."

He was pleased with the fear in her eyes.

As she moved fluidly away, he poured himself another glass of wine and thought of what he would do to his lovely, half-mad wife.


	2. The Blood Vine

Cruelty was something that came easily to him, much in the same way that kindness and compassion came to many others. He had an imperfect grasp on the finer emotions of love and fidelity—he was a pureblooded wizard, driven by determination, greed, and unfailing ego. The layout of his life had only sharpened these qualities in him, so that he regarded most of the human race as a dreadful example of overwrought emotional excess. He felt neither pity nor empathy for anyone, would not hesitate to betray even the closest of his acquaintances, and none of this left him feeling even the slightest bit unkind. He had married Narcissa on the basis of her pedigree, reserved disposition, statue-perfect features, and the suiting of her narcissistic nature to his own. A marriage of convenience had a greater foundation of love than his own. The only one he was in the slightest danger of loving was the boy, whom he protected out of paternal duty and was inclined to tolerate more than any other. Also, there was the pride he felt in seeing a small version of himself growing up in the world. The only thing that he esteemed more than the boy was his fortune, and if that made him a horrible excuse for a man, then so be it. There was very little that he lost sleep over.

With these thoughts as his companions, he threaded his way up the stairs and through the darkened hallways to the Silent Room. He opened it and went inside, locking it behind him.

His wife stood staring out at the darkened night, her head tilted up to gaze at the stars, the long line of her body leaning negligently against the porch door. She affected not to notice his entrance, but he knew. He knew.

He silently came up behind her, stroking her wavy hair back over her neck and baring one shoulder, creamy white and stark against her black velvet gown. There was vulnerability there, at the juncture of her shoulder and slender throat, a tender softness that silently begged for teeth, for marking. He did neither, merely gazed at her luminous skin before softly asking, "What game are you about? Tell me now."

"He's grown up now, darling," she said, her throaty voice a purr. Her hand reached back and pulled her hair from his grasp, drawing it over her shoulder to give him better access to her throat, awaiting his leisure. "I would sooner have him spend his lust with a lowborn mudblood than get entwined with the wrong sort of pureblood family."

"You believe Draco should have this lowborn girl?" he softly asked, drawing near enough that his lips grazed the graceful shell of her ear. "This girl whom he despises and desires all at once?"

"Why not?" was her answer, with a casual shrug of her shoulders. "Any muddied line such as hers would leap at a chance to liaise with our great house. Should she get pregnant, she can be bought off, being wretchedly poor. And I doubt that Draco's interest, strong though it may be _now_, would last beyond the first few couplings. No, he is too much our son, and her humble origins would begin to disgust him no less than it does us."

She turned from the window, her sapphire eyes aglow with thoughts. "Think on it," she said, her voice low. "How much better to acquaint him with the heartlessness he needs in life than to allow him his fling with the forbidden? It certainly beats allowing him to play knight errant to that Pansy girl and get her with child. Granted, her line is good, but Draco deserves only the most perfect of blooms the great houses have to offer. I would not see her made a Malfoy, my dearest husband."

She laid her cool palm against his cheek, eliciting no reaction, even the merest flicker of an eyelash.

"Allow him this, darling," she whispered, pressing her body to his. "This or nothing, then…"

He absently pushed her back a step, saying rather coldly, "You know better than to try that on me, my dear—I am a man ruled by many dark things, but simple lust has never been one of them. As for 'this or nothing,' you know I will not allow the boy to so much as glance sideways at a young woman like Miss Hermione Granger. You're working towards something in this, Narcissa, and I will have the truth of it."

Her eyes grew sly then, and dangerous with the growing glow of her own form of madness.

"Perhaps I merely wish to keep him close, he does adore me so…"

He laughed then, a low sound that conveyed some wry amusement. He stood back from her, idly placing his cane down against the wall while he worked off the links that closed the great cuffs of his starched white shirt.

"So that is it, is it?" he mused, placing the cufflinks carefully on the unlit fireplace's mantle. "You're frightened of his growing up and want no competition for his affections." Again he laughed a little, drawing off his dark velvet jacket and hanging it on a hook placed just for that purpose. "Ah, Narcissa, how aptly you were named—such an ego contained in such a well-deserved body. A sweetly mad plan, my dear, but, alas, even though you have coddled him to the point of an Oedipal complex, I believe Draco has more fortitude than to be won over by his own mother."

She stiffened, affronted to the very core of her being that he could believe such a thing. With her breath hissing from between her bared teeth, she snarled, "You think I could not seduce him? You think I am so old, then? So ugly? You _truly_ believe that I cannot tempt whichever man I choose?"

He gazed at her, his features as haughty and cold as they'd been since she'd first seen him, undisturbed by her tirade.

"I believe that somewhere deeply buried beneath that monstrous self-admiration you have is a woman who truly cares for her son," he said, and took a breath, pausing for a moment. "If only because he is as beautiful as his mother."

She shook her head a little as if to toss off some veil of shadows, her fair features falling into a slight frown of bewilderment.

"Of course I would never hurt him, I love him," she said, as if he had contested such a thing.

"As much as you can love anyone or anything outside of yourself, yes, I believe that," he said, taking out the jeweled pin that held his collar closed and putting it with the cufflinks. "You have, however, failed me in the matter of raising my heir."

Fear flashed in her eyes, briefly and brightly, replaced by an animal look of predatory interest.

"I expected the boy to be strong for himself by his age, Narcissa, not complaining to his mother about being struck by a mere _girl_," he slowly went on, retrieving his cane from its resting place. With slow, studied movements, he pulled his wand forth and regarded it, the only sound Narcissa's panting, shaken breaths. "I did not expect to have to correct my wife on the manner of his upbringing, nor shake her from a deeply-laid intention to seal his loyalty with sex. I should not be having this conversation with you, do you understand?"

"I understand," she whispered, wetting her lips. "The blood oath…"

"You swore it to me, Narcissa," he softly said, but his voice held no pity, no compassion. In him she had found the perfect sadist, moved by no pleas or compliments—he would have of her what he desired, regardless of her willingness, and that was the oath that bound her to him. "The _sangue vite_ will have grown, I imagine."

His cold gray eyes were luminous in the darkness, beginning to glow as he gathered his will.

"Let's set it free," he whispered, and flicked his wand.

Her dress tore itself free in the back, leaving her bared from her nape to the dimple of her buttocks. Her white skin was traced with old, ruby-red scars in the sinuous, twirling tendrils of a vine complete with delicately etched leaves and the beginnings of a bloom. The bloom and more vines were completed in shadowy ghost-lines on the unmarked skin of her upper back and shoulders—where the blood vine grew, her husband's keen blade would follow, taking her blood oath out in its own cost. And the blood vine only spread further when she was foresworn.

"My, my," he sighed, tracing the shadowy, uncompleted parts with his cool fingertips. "What a little monster we've been, my dear."

"Lucius," she said, her voice quavering. In this she was helpless as a babe, her sexual allure having no effect whatsoever on her husband, her beauty causing no second thoughts, no remorse. He was what he was, and knew her too well to be deceived. "Please! I'm sorry!"

"Nonsense," he scoffed, taking her elbow and guiding her to the center of the room. Another flick of the wand lifted her wrists above her head, suspending her on her toetips, her skirts swirling around her ample hips while the torn out back of her dress draped itself over her rounded bottom. "You have no more understanding of regret than I do, Narcissa. You're simply trying to lessen my usage of you—but you need not fear my anger, my dearest, it isn't in you to arouse much of anything in me."

It was said, she knew, merely to prick her pride, her ego being as justifiably large as it was. Still, it had the desired affect—no narcissist, however well-grounded, could abide having their charms denied, their beauty reviled. His continuous ability to be completely unaffected by her was one thing that had kept her faithful to her marriage. The _sangue vite_ was the other. They were imminently suited, Lord Malfoy and his wife—the stoic and the narcissist, pulled together by the dreadful need of her ego for acknowledgment, and his egotistical need to control.

"Please, Lucius! I swear I would've turned in the end," she sobbed, her eyes wide and fearful as he idly replaced his wand and laid his cane down against the nearest chair. "I swear to you that I would never have harmed our son! I only fear to lose him! It is a mother's fear!"

"It is a _mad_ fear, a mad fear of one without conscience or hesitation," Lucius said, his tone conversational. He opened the neck of his white shirt, sighing a little at the heat in the room. "I blame myself for your behavior, Narcissa. Had I cared for you as I should, we would not be here now, and the _sangue vite_ would have risen no further than needed to seal your blood oath."

"Please," she whimpered, knowing it was without affect, watching him move to the great cupboard and open it. All manner of instruments rested inside, whips and pinchers, paddles and manacles, knives and canes. He took his time in choosing, letting her anxiety rise like the tide. At last he chose a leather flogger, the tails long and tapering to points that would tear. She swallowed a sob to see him shake it once, expertly loosening the tails even as his gray eyes assessed where his first blow would do the most damage.

"Remember, Narcissa," he murmured, trailing his fingers down the curve of her cheek. "I do this because I promised you."

She nodded jerkily, still sobbing as the first lash laid itself across her thigh, shredding the delicate velvet of her gown and leaving weals on her skin.

He lashed her until the gown fell apart in tatters and her white skin glowed pink with the angry lines. Only then did he discard the flogger and reach for the black leather case that brought Narcissa's cries and pleadings to a ragged, panicked peak.

"I beg you, do not do this!" she screamed, twisting in her bonds, the whites of her eyes showing as she struggled madly to escape.

Ignoring her pleas, her screams, he wordlessly opened the case and withdrew a finely honed scalpel. It was old sterling silver, a thing he'd inherited from his father along with a predilection for causing welcome pain.

Despite her protestations and wailing despair, Narcissa quieted and stilled when he set the blade to her flesh, tracing the shadowy lines to etch fresh wounds along the artful trailing of the blood vine. She whimpered and sobbed in pain, but was too much herself to fight it or him. The pain was reparation, the cutting was retribution—both had earned their right to this ceremony, and neither regretted their roles. Still, it was long and grueling work which he did with precise, exacting care.

"Mercy! _Please_, mercy save me!" Narcissa finally cried, her tears overflowing. Standing as she was with her wrists bound and hoisted up, her tears spilled down to catch the delicate curve of her jaw before dripping onto the floor. "Mercy save me!"

"Mercy?" he echoed, his cultured voice amused and questioning. "_Mercy_? Tell me, my darling wife, where was _mercy_ while you stood poised on the edge of vilification?"

He tucked back a strand of her hair with delicate, precise movements and asked, "Where was _mercy_ when your family was on the brink of disowning you?"

He leaned down, stroking her sweat-tangled hair with one deceptively gentle hand. He looked into her eyes, his own cool grey ones as removed as ever.

"My poor dear," he said, soothingly, as if to a child. "What took you in when _mercy_ abandoned you to the fickle whims of fate? What saved you from yourself and kept you from plunging off of the precipice of your own making? Name me that thing."

She sighed, her eyes overflowing with both tears and a dark, strange gratitude. She turned her head and pressed her lips to his white, cool hand.

"Cruelty," she whispered, a lover's caress, her body trembling with emotion. Her thick lashes lifted, her blue eyes meeting his, full of all the fawning love and gratitude of a thrice-saved dog. "Your cruelty saved me, Lucius. As it always has…"

"That's right, my dear," he murmured, flicking those tears from her jaw, close enough to kiss but doing no such thing. "And never forget that, my little narcissist. For all of your vanity and snobbery, you were on the brink of self-immolation when I found you, and for that one act you _will_ remain indebted, won't you? You _will_ remain obedient, my model wife, and not let that pride and ego overshadow the things which I demand of you."

"You have always understood me best," she sighed, sobbing a little when he pulled away from her to reclaim the flogger.

"Of course I have," he conceded, snapping it once to loosen the tails, giving it a measuring look that he transferred to her exposed body. "What sort of husband to you would I be if I didn't?"

And with that, he once more applied the flogger to her skin to the tune of her weeping gratitude.


	3. The Boy

As midnight descended on Malfoy manor, the Lord himself went stalking away down the darkened corridors, his long hair floating out behind him, as visible in the gloom as his starkly white shirt. His boots made no sound on the carpet and he surprised a house-elf, giving it an absent kick that sent it scuttling out of danger.

Behind him, the door of the Silent Room stood open, and all the more uninviting for the strange weeping that echoed out.

Still, the boy—being reared in this strange home with these strangers as mother and father—crept towards it, his courage not lessened by the sick apprehension that gripped his gut.

Like a shadow on the landing he skirted the corner and made his way to the door he'd seen his father quit. With a worried glance in the direction of his father's suites, he gave the door a gentle nudge and slipped soundlessly inside.

Remarkably calm for one so young, he gazed at the form of his mother, face-down on the floor and weeping. He was not so moved by it, this vision of his mother's torn and bleeding back. Even at his youthful age, he was used to seeing such things that his father's cruelty and his mother's viciousness could conspire to create. This horror, then, was not so very much.

"Lucius," she sobbed, lifting her head, and began laughing suddenly. Her head whipped around and saw him there in the doorway, a slight and silent figure with large, empty eyes. "My darling boy! My light! Come here, to me! Come to mother!"

Sensing danger, the boy took a step back, shaking his head in negation.

She hissed at him, her fair features contorting for a frightening second—ravenous and irrationally angry. But then they fell back into the usual luminous, flawlessly beautiful face he had seen from the day he was born.

"_I said, 'Come to me!'_" she pleaded, pulling herself around in a way that was almost serpentine.

He took another step back and started when he bumped into something. Looking quickly backwards, he saw his father looking down at him with coolly appraising grey eyes, a cloak dangling in his hand.

"Now, now, Draco," he said, his tone mellow, his features shuttered on some secret. "Haven't I warned you about being out and about in the Manor after midnight?"

"Yes, sir," he said. He did not stutter. He did not shake when his father's hand rested lightly and menacingly on his shoulder. He had learned to live with fear from the cradle, was fed it with his mother's milk, and had learned it at the hand of this man so very adept at the games he played. Somewhere in the depths of his mind he understood that he was being groomed to take his father's place, and the thought inspired no true revulsion, only a resigned numbness and a strange sense of thrilling power.

"What on earth are you doing in here?" Lord Malfoy asked, his tone still mild and conversational, though his hand seemed to clench tighter on his son's shoulder. Neither of them looked at the mostly nude woman laying on the floor, shivering in her own cooling blood, her sapphire eyes watching the both of them with sharp, wary attentiveness.

"I heard something, sir," Draco answered, solemn. His classmates would not have recognized him, had they seen him, this pale and fey young man. There was no one here to bully, to tease, no one here to turn on and vent his fears and cruelties nurtured in the womb of this house he would some day be master of. There was just him—a boy not quite a man and still lost as a little child—and the people who had raised him, perhaps, as best as they knew how.

Lord Malfoy made no comment, merely assessed his son with his too-knowing eyes. Finally, his tone softer than Draco had ever heard it in his life, he said, "Go embrace your mother, Draco—she's had a rather trying night."

The boy swallowed hard, knowing a test when he saw one. Would he break and flee, trusting in his father's continued indulgence? Or would he do as he was bidden and gain a sliver more of his father's respect, a miniscule amount of his father's regard?

He glanced back at his mother, still beautiful, even in her tattered clothing and wounds, her eyes tranquil. There was a tremulous quality about her now, an air of fragility that had always moved him, since the time he was a toddler and dreamed great dreams of rescuing her and making her a queen. Child's dreams, but he still cared for her, having spent the majority of his time as her most treasured and jealously guarded possession.

There was a power shift in the air, he could sense it, and had enough of his father in him to pick the winning side.

Swallowing hard, he knelt down at Narcissa's side and gently pulled her up into his arms, closing his eyes as her familiar scent surrounded him. It was something exotic and expensive that his father bought her once a year, a scent that meant attention and a rabid, over-protective affection. The tendrils of her hair tickled his nose as he settled his eyes into the crook of her neck. His hands slid in the slick, cool blood on her back but she made no complaint of pain. She crooned to him as she had when he was a baby and stroked his hair.

"My darling," she sighed, her arms surprisingly strong as she hugged him. "My only one! Are you alright, dearest? Did you have a nightmare? Do you want mother to come and sit with you?"

"No, mother, I'm fine," Draco assured her, feeling somehow stained by her blood. "I just heard you crying."

"Crying?" she echoed, and gave that sultry, throaty laughter that he so adored. "Why, darling, I was doing no such thing! Your father was teasing me, you know how he teases."

"Yes," Draco lied, aware with every fiber of his being of his father watching them, his hawkish gaze taking in the minute details of their interaction, looking for some telling indicator of something he suspected. He cast his lot in with the woman who had always protected him and fervently asked, "You're hurt, aren't you? Do you need me to help—"

"Draco," Lucius said, his tone unchanged but holding now a menace that was absent before. "That's quite enough."

The boy reluctantly stood, pulling his mother up with him. She was all smiles and tears of joy, raining kisses on his face, smearing his mouth with faint traces of her blood. He stepped away from her and looked at his father.

"One more second of that and you'd be as hysterical as your mother," Lord Malfoy said, and moved to swirl the cloak over his wife's shoulders with all of the graceful flair of an illusionist. He bent and swept her up into his arms with one sudden move, ignoring the kiss she pressed to his jaw. "Go back to your room, Draco."

"Will she be alright?" he asked, his anxiety for her overriding his usual self-possession.

"It does not concern you!" Lucius sharply said, and strode out into the dark hallway with Narcissa gazing longingly over his shoulder at her son. "And close that door behind you!"

Draco repressed his concern and took himself off to his room, making sure that the door was securely shut in his wake.


	4. Promises

It was not to healing and forgiveness that her husband took her, merely to the bedchamber they'd shared since the evening of their marriage. Still, she was calmed from her frantic worry over her son by the familiar dark furnishings and the cool, gloomy atmosphere.

"You swore a blood oath to me, my dearest," Lucius purred, settling her onto the bed with surprising care. He peeled the cloak from her shoulders and jerked her forward to see her back, examining her in much the same way as he would a horse or a dog that interested him. His breath came out in a low croon of discovery, an unconscious reflex to the sight of the rambling vine etched into her flesh by his own hand.

She lay quiescent, patiently immobile in his grasp, stretched forward on her own knees.

"I repay," she whispered, feeling the pull of the clots when her muscle shifted beneath her skin. "I may play my games, Lucius, but in the end I always bend to your will."

"Of course you do," he murmured, and released her with a suddenness that bespoke disgust. He was, however, ever her master. When it came to the fine handling required to keep someone like Narcissa as tame as she was, Lucius was indeed an expert. He no sooner released her than he had her in hand again, plucking away the pitiful remains of her gown while muttering the words that brought his cane sailing into the room for him.

It was always such after a time in the Silent Room. Though he controlled himself as a powerful wizard should, in the end he was a man as any other and such abandonment to his hands was heady and powerful stuff.

And he knew just how to keep her tightly snared in his leash. She would need some little compensation for what she'd so willingly suffered at his hands, and expected a reward as due her beauty—she was, after all, a narcissist, with all of the characteristics inherent in such. There was, in effect, so much a woman such as she could take.

Narcissa smiled as he drew his wand, head falling back as the familiar darkness surrounded her. The bonds, when they came, constricted her, binding wrists to ankles, calves to thighs, throat to headboard. The blindfold kept her in darkness, the charm silenced her ears, the gag ensured her sensory deprivation—she would see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. She would be utterly under his power.

The only way she was content to have him.

There was no fear of a trick here. Remote as they may be to each other, this one trust between them held stronger than any bonds of love and was not one to be easily cast aside. Protecting that trust kept Narcissa a willing subordinate and Lucius in firm control.

Still, it was with no little relief to feel the familiar touch of his skin, smooth and strangely cool, the texture of his hands and hair, the brush of his eyelashes on her skin. She had learned these tell-tale signs well, Narcissa—deprived of the vision of his beauty, she felt it through the only sense left to her.

There was no kindness in his hands when he touched her. Did one show kindness to a riding crop? To an ink quill? To any utensil one used? No, one used them for a purpose, and that is what Lord Malfoy did to his bound and silenced wife. And if he knowingly used her harshly, pressing her freshly wounded back to the carved headboard so that she could feel that pain she needed for her pleasure, why, then, it could be regarded as a mere accident only, and leave her wondering.

Narcissa, however, never left a lover in doubt of her. Even gagged and bound she conveyed her enjoyment through wriggling and the subtle, sweet tensing of her body. It was she who went first, bringing him by doing so, her bare and lash-scored skin running slick with sweat that stung and added its own painful sweetness.

He gripped her hard at the end, fine fingers clenching at her hips to hold her roughly against his straining body. She felt the tension run out of him like a wave pulling back from the shore as his cool forehead dropped lightly to press against the side of her neck, his breath whispering over her shoulder in much the same way as her son's had. She could offer no croon of comfort, could only blindly turn her head and press her cheek to him.

He pulled away and it all vanished, down to the weals on her skin. She dropped to the floor on all fours, startled by the abruptness, her blue eyes finding his and asking question she would never dare utter aloud.

He gazed down at her in perfect stillness, in that withdrawn and assessing way he had. A negligent flick of his ring-laden fingers brought her to her feet, her own beloved robe sliding itself around her shoulders. She clutched it, grateful, and pulled it closed around her. Her back throbbed, the blood vine still etched in her skin. Her whole body throbbed, the side-effect of being what she was—pleasure feeding on itself to create a larger hunger, a vaster emptiness that required even more to fill it which would, in turn, spawn an even larger hole. He had known it when she matured, he alone had seen that the Black line had thrown a truly dangerously powerful creature. And in order to control that power and prevent anyone else having it, he had bound her with the blood oath, with her gratitude, and had made a succubus his wife.

"Lucius," she sighed, heady with it as she often was after the act that fed her powers. She saw him start just a little, enough to betray that he was not at all times immune to her siren-like call.

"Come here," he said, his voice still cold, holding out his hand to her. She went, clutching his fingers like a lifeline, moving so that she wrapped his arm around her waist as she fitted herself to the lean line of his body, purring like a cat.

"You remember," he whispered to her, a caution. "You remember what I've done for you, Narcissa—but for me, imagine how much you would have suffered at the Dark Lord's hand. Should he even _imagine_— "

"Please don't say it!" she cried, terrified of the very idea of it—being separated from her son, from the man she was bound to. "I'll behave, Lucius, I swear it! May the blood vine strangle me if I don't!"

"Go to bed now, Narcissa," he said, sounding tired and somehow wrung. Cruel as he was, manners were such a part of him that he helped her into their bed, careful of the wounds on her back. "There are no chains to bind you, there is nothing but that choice you made."

She clung to his hand when he pulled away, her eyes full of tears. Kissing his knuckles and the rings on his fingers, she fervently whispered, "Thank you, Lucius! Thank you for what you have done!"

He said nothing in return, just pulled his hand away and left her alone in the darkness.


	5. The Dire Warning

The boy shifted uncomfortably under his father's steady stare. They'd been at the grand dining table for what felt like hours, and still the little house elves scuttled about bearing platters and salvers of antique silver. Draco hissed a curse at one that turned up at his elbow, taking out some measure of his tension on the small creature. It yelped, and his father frowned just a little. The boy immediately dropped his gaze to his full plate, sensing some turn in his father's mood. It wasn't the petty meanness to the house elf, he knew—his father was absently cruel to them himself.

"Draco," Lord Malfoy drawled, his low, aristocratic voice both soothing and ominous all at once. "Have you heard from any of your little friends from school? Perhaps from Miss _Granger_?"

Even the nonchalant utterance couldn't conceal his father's disdain for the young witch. Confused by the question, Draco lifted his gaze and said, "No, sir. Why on earth would that dirty mudblood contact _me_?"

"Why indeed," Lord Malfoy mused, his grey eyes cutting to his wife, who busied herself with her knife and fork.

Draco followed suite, both of them staring at Narcissa, who looked up. She had eyes only for her son, however, and beamed at him, reaching across to grip his hand, her head tilted prettily.

"Merlin's balls, mother, will you ever stop babying me?" he hissed, unnerved, jerking his hand away. She had always treated him thus, it was only since last night that he had any reason at all to fear her regard. It was something in the way his father watched them, tension unfurling inside his lean body, like a serpent about to strike.

"Don't speak to your mother that way, boy," Lord Malfoy languidly said, giving Draco a disapproving glare. "Apologize."

Draco fought down an urge to be sullen and ground out, "I'm sorry, mother."

"That's fine, darling! Just fine!" she sighed, her eyes swimming with pride of him. "So long as you love me, my precious one!"

"Of course I do," he snapped, flushing to say it, having no other recourse.

They fell silent once more, and Draco took a tasteless bite of his expertly cooked food.

"I would assume you would tell me if you were interested in any of the young girls at school," Lord Malfoy said, again broaching the subject. "You're of an age now that I should expect you to begin sifting them for someone who suits you."

Draco cocked his head, knowing what his father was implying and not liking it one bit. Even since Lucius was a young man, the world had changed—people were not contracted into marriages, wizards and witches were not bred like so many thoroughbreds to obtain a perfect strain of blood regardless of their personal preferences. And, more to the point, one no longer married at fifteen or sixteen years of age to get a head start on those all-important offspring.

"I was only a little older than you when I first met your mother," Lucius pleasantly said, making conversation. Had Draco not been focused so sharply on him, he might've missed the subtle undertone and the sly, sidelong look that Lord Malfoy cast at his wife. "Wasn't I, dear?"

"You were fifteen, Lucius," Narcissa answered promptly with the air of one much schooled in such trivial things. "The very same age as Draco is now."

The boy controlled the urge to grimace, and hid his trepidation behind his usual vain snobbery, asking, "And what has this to do with Hermione Granger?"

"Don't be stupid, Draco, there's no need," Lucius said, giving up any pretense of eating his elegant meal, settling instead for the wine that filled his glass, crimson and heavy as blood. "Your mother has brought up an interesting theory, which I pray you will not put to the test."

"Which is?" Draco asked, bristling under the line of questioning, his suspicious gaze flicking from his mother to his father and back again. "What's going on here?"

"Perhaps I have not made myself clear in the past," Lucius said, sipping his wine and putting the glass down, toying with its stem. There was nothing playful in his cold grey eyes, though, no joke lurked in their depths, and Draco hunched slightly under the force of it, brows drawn. "I will not tolerate you _fraternizing_ with filthy, lowborn _muggles_," The words came out sharply and clearly, disdain dripping from every syllable. "I urge you to bear in mind your position in this house and in this family—take no risks, boy, outside of those which bring you gain. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir," Draco said, meaning clicking into place and pale cheeks burning that they should have seen through the thin veneer of dislike to the core of what drove him to revile Hermione Granger. If there is something better than a Malfoy, then that thing must be either possessed or destroyed, but suffer it not to grow unhindered and surpass their great name. In this case, his father bid him leave it be—and in the House of Malfoy, a bidding from the Lord was such as the word of God. "I understand clearly, sir."

"However," Lucius said after a short silence, once again regarding his wine, a cold smile curling the corners of his perfect mouth. "A boy your age requires outlets, does he not?"

"Indeed, darling," Narcissa chimed in, beaming at them both. She reached out and gripped her husband's hand, seemingly unphased when he shook her off. "You should have girlfriends, Draco, darling. Isn't there any one female who has good breeding to tempt you in that horrid school?"

"Hardly, mother," Draco sneered, hiding his embarrassment behind his attitude. "And you kept me here, remember? It was _you_ who wished me to attend Hogwarts."

"Because I didn't want you so far from me, Draco, dearest!" Narcissa cooed, transferring her hand to her son instead, seeking that acknowledgement in place of her husband's. "Surely you wouldn't have wished to be separated from me?"

The boy said nothing. It was an old argument, one begun on his father's lips and carried on in his own—and never in all of that time had it penetrated the thick armor of his mother's intentions where he was concerned.

"We would, of course, welcome any friend of yours, provided she is of good lineage and conducts herself well," Lucius went on, smirking to see his son's discomfit. The boy seemed utterly horrified at the discussion, and his humiliation was no small portion of the enjoyment his father gained from it. "Luckily for you, your mother refused to enter a marriage contract with the Rosier family or you would be parceled off already."

Draco's lip curled in dislike, knowing the Rosier girl from school—hard on the eyes and ears, to say the least. Were there only a few trueblood families that produced handsome children anymore?

"_That_ hideous nag," he scoffed, tossing his napkin onto the table. "I'd have poisoned her wedding toast!"

Lucius smiled slightly at this, amused somewhere in that calculating, abstracted brain.

"Too bad the Dark Lord never had offspring," he murmured, half to himself. "What a prince you would've made, my boy."

"May I be excused?" Draco snapped, and added belatedly, "_Sir_."

"Of course," Lord Malfoy said, gracefully waving his hand. "Think on what I've said, Draco. Should you fail to find a suitable mate, it will fall to me to find one for you."

With this dire warning in his head, the boy strode away from his table to the blessed darkness of his own room.


	6. Revelations

The _Sangue Vite_ pulsed on her back as Narcissa considered her son from the shadows. It pulsed in warning, as stark a warning as the boy had received just now in the dining hall. '_Do not be forsworn, do not break faith with the one who has remade you_…'

Yet he was her darling, her own little one. How she had labored so to bring him into this world, which was remade with his birth into something darkly dangerous, perils lurking on all sides to threaten his little life. And the _pain_! The sweet pain of his entry to his new life! He'd torn her, this get of hers now almost a man, torn her terribly in his haste to be born and ever after there had been no more…She did not entirely discount her husband's hand in this. Lucius was no fool, and the last thing on earth he needed was a daughter. The boy he could control, and was in no danger from Narcissa, but a _girl_! A girl would grow up to be a succubus like her mother, perhaps, and if not, then a rival to be exterminated. And blood that would leave no stain on Narcissa's hands or conscience would indelibly mark Lord Malfoy's.

She thought again of what Lucius had forbidden her, the plan she had concieved the moment of conception itself—a boy born, reared, and bound, an eternal companion to give her the constant love and tribute her beauty deserved and her narcicism required. The boy had enough of his parents beauty to entice her, and she with no conscience did not consider their relationship under accepted terms. He was hers, plain and simple. Through the nurishment of her body she had brought him forth, and through the payment of pain he belonged to her and her alone.

Again the blood vine throbbed, and she felt the shadowy tendrils unfurling along her sides, tickling over her ribs in shadowy lines that her husband would carve cleanly with his blade. She felt it, and counted herself lucky that the vine chose to stray forwards instead of up—one day it would twine around her neck, and she was not foolish enough to believe that Lucius would not slit her throat in its wake. The value of her oath was the worthiness of her word, and should she be so forsworn then he would have no reason to keep her, no reason to harbour a thing he had no control over. And so she doled out her plots in fits and starts, ever aware of his hold on her.

The boy became aware of her there in the shadows, and turned his pale face towards her, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. It hurt her so that he should look at her thus, the love and awe absent from his beautiful eyes.

"Darling," she purred, and held her hand out to him as she gracefully glided to his side. He rose from his seat on his bed automatically, clasping her hand with a faint air of question. "My poor dear! Has he upset you, darling? Your father can be so nasty when he wishes, but he loves you, truly."

"The only thing my father loves is his bank account," the boy sharply said, sitting back down. "He thinks I should search out a wife? As if there is such choice fare at good old _Hogwarts_."

Narcissa sat beside him, draping her arm over his shoulders and murmuring soft words in his ear. He'd grown so much over the last year, shooting up like a slender reed with all of the promise of his father's lithe build. The shoulders that had once fit snugly to her side were now broadened, sinewy with the leaness that comes with a frame outracing its resources. She remarked ruefully that he ate too little, and decided at once to have only his favorite dishes prepared in the kitchen and sent up.

"Why does he choose now?" the boy wondered, and the keen mind so often sidetracked by a child's boasting and savagery now worked to unravel the mystery of his own kin. "I have never understood him, mother. The things he does, the games he plays with me—I'm lost at the best of times, and always him lording it over me, laughing as I fail."

"He is teaching you, darling, just," she sighed, stroking his hair. He wore it short, much to her consternation. It wasn't fashionable, he said, to have long hair anymore—but Narcissa always believed he would look more noble with his hair long. "Draco, won't you let your hair grow just a little? It's so _severe_—"

"Have you even been listening?" he demanded, exploding to his feet to pace in an agitation of nerves. His hollow cheeks flushed with anger and his eyes glittered with the same dreadful yet wonderful passion that sometimes gripped his father. "Do you hear a word I say?"

"Of course," Narcissa lied, "tsk"-ing over the nail she'd snagged on his jacket. "You must calm down, dearest. Do not work yourself into a temper."

"What is he up to, mother?" the boy asked, half wailing it in his desperation. "He forbids me from the mudblood girl, knowing full well how humiliating it would be for her, and orders me to hunt up a bride! I'm not a dog, mother! I won't go sniffing about the daughters of pureblood families in search of a bitch in heat!"

"Of course not, darling, that is beyond the pale," Narcissa said, folding him into her embrace. He went rigid before slumping against her, his arms folding around her waist and his head resting on her shoulder. "There, there, dear one, mother will fix it. If you _truly_ want that mudblood girl, then you shall have her."

"I don't even _like_ her, mother, not _really_," the boy said, voice muffled against her skin. He laughed a little, short and self-depreciating. "It's just…she's _smart_ and so _talented_! And stuck to that stupid Weasley boy like glue. Not to mention she's friends with the great Harry Potter! How a filthy muggle came to have so much talent and such friends is beyond me!"

"I understand, dearest," Narcissa quietly said, seeing a portion of herself reflected in his monstrous ego. She stroked his nape like she would a cat and felt the last of his anger drain out of him. "I understand better than you think. One such as that has no right to the glories of the wizarding world. Should you…_do_ anything, Draco, darling, I assure you that your father will be the very last to know."

"What do you mean, mother?" Draco asked, his hands suddenly loosening.

"You are a Malfoy, darling," Narcissa said, pushing him back a step, realizing that she could look him eye to eye now, tall as he was. "No jumped up little mudblood tramp will deny you your rights. Whatever her talents and affiliations may be, you are better than she, Draco, dearest. And whatever it takes to make her acknowledge that…well, putting her in her rightful place can hardly be seen as a _crime_, now can it?"

He looked at her with a mixture of respect and revulsion, her meaning coming clear.

"But—"

"_I_ will handle your father, Draco," she said, cutting of his argument. She stroked his forehead and cupped his jaw, noting the slight flinch in him. He was nervous of her, young as he was. She wondered suddenly if he'd ever bedded any of the girls of which he spoke. It seemed to her it was past time he did so—a boy his age should have lovers aplenty. And he was so very temptingly close, and caught in the snare of her beauty and grip so that she couldn't help but take some small advantage. So she gave him a kiss that should have scorched him down to his toes, and was slightly confused by the way he tensed and hastily jerked away to stare at her with eyes wild as a hunted stag's. "Darling, whatever is the matter?"

He wiped at his mouth with his sleeve-covered hand, startled and scared, his hollow young face a mask of disbelief.

"Draco," she said, laughingly, holding out her arms even as the blood vine curled its way towards her belly. "Come to mother, now, you silly boy! Why on earth are you behaving so oddly?"

"_Oddly_?" he echoed, jumping back a step when she took one towards him. "You've just _kissed_ me, mother! For heaven's sake, have you lost your mind utterly?!"

"What on earth are you making such a fuss about?" she chided him, toying with a long curl of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. "Can't a mother kiss her son?"

"Not like _that_!" he hotly retorted. "And you well know it!"

He pushed past her and ran out into the hallway, ignoring her lilting questions, blindly making his way to his father's study.

It was instinct and not malice that led him to seek out his sire. Always in the past, on those rare occasions when he and his mother did not see eye to eye on something, he'd turned to his father. While not always the most prudent of courses, Lucius had a way of dealing with Narcissa that was effective to say the least, and Draco nearly always got what he wanted out of the deal. Now, however, he approached his father as a fifteen year old boy frightened by his mother's strange behavior and his own unsubtle reactions to her blatant beauty. The countless lewd comments his cronies had made concerning Narcissa Malfoy mocked him now, striking a chord of shame and jealousy at their truth.

"By all means, do come in," Lord Malfoy said, hands steepled beneath his chin, looking only slightly surprised by his son's frantic entry. He remained seated behind his massive desk, regarding his flushed and trembling son with all of the indifferent interest of a removed deity. "And to what do I owe this unannounced visit, Draco?"

The boy paced madly in front of his desk, agitated and panicked so that Lucius began to take some small alarm. He was secure that there was nothing in Malfoy Manor that could hurt Draco…insofar as he adhered to the rules and did not go traipsing about where the shadows lay long and he had no business being.

"Mother," the boy finally said, and it was eloquent of loss.

"Well, well," Lucius murmured, leaning back in his chair and fussing with his left cuff, making sure the link sat just _so_. "Have a seat, Draco, and tell me what has happened…And do try to be coherent."

The boy plopped down into one of the antique seats, his face miserable and his shoulders slumped. He seemed beaten down, disillusioned, perhaps. His slender white hand kept lifting to his lips and Lucius could guess well enough from just that what had happened. Comfort gone awry, and the boundaries of a teenage boy's life set topsy-turvey.

"I think…I think she's sick, father," the boy said, his anguished eyes lifting, the whole of his hope in that one belief. "Since last night she seems so different! Was she hurt or something…"

"No more so than she's ever been," Lucius calmly said, his serenity steadying his son, even if it was more akin to the calm before the storm. "How do you mean that she's different?"

"I…I don't know, sir," the boy said, letting his head fall into his hands. "I felt it last night when I…well, _you know_. The two of you were fighting and I was in the middle and since then she's been _odd_."

Lucius waited patiently, a slight frown crossing his lips.

"She's always been so loving," the boy blurted, but anguished as he was no tears fell from his eyes. For all his selfish, petty meanness, he was inherently strong. "But it's changed now, sir, and tonight—just now—she actually _kissed_ me!"

And still Lucius said nothing, though his eyes narrowed.

His continued silence unnerved his son, who suddenly reconsidered the wisdom of turning to his father.

"It wasn't a motherly kiss," he softly said, and pressed his hand to his mouth again, horrified as it echoed in memory. "She laughed after, and tried to hold me, but…but it wasn't a motherly kiss…"

Lucius sighed a little, and flicked his fingers at the door, shutting it securely behind his son. There was no pity in his gaze, only understanding. He, too, had once been a boy, and knew that it was a trying time in life, this exit from childhood and rough entry into adulthood.

"Draco, I beg you to listen closely because this will be the only time I ever say this," he lowly said, the seriousness of his tone causing his young son to fasten raptly onto him. "But please do not think harshly of your mother, nor should you shun her or turn from her affections."

"But father, that's—"

"_Unnatural_ as her intentions are where you are concerned, you are the greatest part of her, the part which she loves best," Lucius said, idly picking up his discarded quill and running it through his fingers. "She sees you not as a child, not as her son, but as an extension of herself—and the only thing in this world your mother loves is herself."

The boy's wide eyes lost that helpless look of fear. Now they filled with thought and conclusions, finding ways by which to gain and paths by which to escape.

"She's crazy, you mean," he concluded, and managed to find a pity his father lacked.

"Not as such," Lucius said, smiling wryly. "Your mother is a narcissist, Draco, and that word isn't used lightly where she is concerned. Were it not for the oaths that have bound her—first to her father and then to myself—she would be unable to live in polite society. She lacks a conscience, has no concept of others needs, and cannot conceive of a world in which she is not the center. There has only been one portion of her life spent free of fetters, and in that time she managed to do such things as I will never divulge."

The boy's eyes widened even more, luminous and lovely in his pale face.

"But the thing that draws her most to you, Draco, is the thing which I feared in you the most," Lucius sighed, dropping the quill and splaying his hand on his desk, the other clenching on his chair. "And the closer you've come to maturity, the more she is drawn to you."

His grey eyes bored into his son's, serious and cold as he said, "Should you ever trace your mother's genealogy, you would find that the family Black had no few ancestors descended from ancient sources of magic. It is from these sources that the great houses claim their most powerful talents and the purity of magic in their blood."

"You mean…like demons and such, sir?" the boy asked, no slouch in his history lessons. "I know there was once a satyr in the history of Malfoy, Quintus Malfoy wrote about it in his _History of the Pureblood Houses_."

"Yes, the line of Malfoy does not lack for satyrs and sirens alike, and perhaps that is why things have fallen out in such a way," Lucius softly said, recognizing the easing of his son's features. The talking had distracted him, calmed him—Lucius had always done such with his son, settled him in the face of horror by rationalizing it, shaping it to his will. "You see, every ten generations or so the Black line throws a succubus or incubus, a creature of vast magical power which gains that power through—"

"Sex," Draco finished hoarsely, understanding flooding him. He shuddered a little and twisted his fingers together, lowering his gaze to his bare feet. "And that's what mother is, then?"

Lucius did not answer. There was no use in stating the obvious.

"She a true succubus, and you the descendent of satyrs and sirens…well, I was not sure to begin with, but the older you become the more certain I am," Lucius said, and his voice was so low, so whispery soft that Draco strained to hear him. "I have every reason to believe that when you come of age, my son, you will share your mother's traits…and her vast powers."

"Incubus," Draco said, a low moan of despair. "That's why she thinks she can kiss me, then? She thinks I'm like her? She thinks I want _that_?"

Lucius smiled again, frighteningly lupine.

"Don't shame her, Draco, your mother is the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on," Lord Malfoy said, no small compliment. "She will not press you any further than her small games have already allowed. I think that, aside from fending off a somewhat upsetting kiss, you will have very little trouble controlling her."

"Because you've bound her, you mean?" Draco asked, cold to the soul.

"The _Sangue Vite_ binds her," Lucius said, cocking his head back to assess his son through half-lidded, faintly mocking eyes. "I allow her these little moments, Draco, to tangle her in her own web. There is no single gesture your mother makes that escapes my notice. I knew she would try something along these lines. I did _not_, however, expect you to react so very childishly."

That struck a chord of steel, he saw, secretly pleased when the boy sat up straight and proud, his chin lifting in unconscious, haughty imitation of his father.

"Once you have sufficiently _gathered_ yourself, kindly go and apologize to your mother for your rudeness. I expect you left her in quite a rush," Lucius said, plucking up his quill and returning to his papers as if this whole conversation had never happened.

"One more question, father," Draco said, pride stiffening his words along with his spine. "Are _you_ an incubus? Is _that_ how you bound her with this blood vine thing?"

Lucius didn't look up from his papers, he merely said, "Don't be daft, Draco."

The boy stood, wrenching open the door with a force borne of shame and fury.

"And Draco," Lucius mildly called, amused by it all. "Do please close the door behind you."

"Yes, _father_," Draco hissed, and the slamming of the door soon followed.


	7. Blessing and a Curse

It wasn't exactly a calm and collected young man who made his way to his parent's room. His eyes were wide, showing the whites, and his cheeks still flamed with fury at his father and the ugly things he'd revealed. Still, he was no fool, and already his keen mind was working at the issue, reminding him of the vast power which would soon be his.

He knocked gently on the door, entering at his mother's trilling call.

"Draco, darling!" she cried, rising from her seat next to the empty fireplace, the book she'd been reading falling unheeded to the ground. She took quick, light steps to him and promptly squeezed him tightly to her, sighing with relief. "I thought you were upset, darling! I was sure you hated me."

"Of course not, mother, don't be ridiculous," he said, but was careful to pull away, unnerved by what he knew of her now and how delicate the hold that kept her from him. "I wanted to apologize, mother. I'm sorry I ran away from you, I just wasn't—I didn't _expect_ you to…well, anyways, I'm sorry."

"Never you mind, dearest," Narcissa sighed, tenderly stroking his brow. "You look so upset, Draco, darling. Nearly as unhinged as your cousin, bless his meddling hide."

"Mother," he said, swatting her hand down with the absent aggravation of years of practice, holding her cool hand tightly in his to prevent further fussing. "I have to ask you something."

"Anything, my darling boy!" she crooned, fingers folding around his and drawing him across the room to sit next to her on the old, dark settee. She kept his hand trapped in hers, resting on her lap. He couldn't remember a time when she didn't do such, she'd always kept him so very close. "You're shaking, Draco. Are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine, mother," he said. Taking a deep breath, he held her gaze and steadily asked, "Mother, what's a blood vine?"

She went still as a marble statue, only the glitter of her blue eyes betraying her. She stared at him for a long moment and then laughed. It was a brittle, nervous sound that made him flinch, ill covering her discomfit.

"Wherever did you hear that word, dearest?" she asked, and her attempt at a light tone was spoiled by the underlying tension.

"That doesn't matter," he sharply said. "Tell me what it is!"

"It's a blood oath, Draco, darling," she finally said, relaxing just slightly, her fingers warming on his own. "It's very similar to an Unbreakable Vow, only the oath is set in the blood, sealed in flesh…and has, perhaps, both a tighter and looser hold on the bound one than the Unbreakable Vow allows for."

"Were you sworn to such, mother?" the boy asked, and the love he'd always felt for her overpowered his fear. She'd always loved him, always spoiled and cared for him, and his concern resurfaced. "Are you held against your will here, mother? Did father trap you—"

"_Draco_!" Narcissa said, and for the first time in memory her tone was sharp, affronted. "I was living in the depths of hell when your father freed me, both of us little better than children! There is _nothing_ that I would refuse him, Draco, so do not speak to me of traps or unwillingness—I will not suffer him to be so impugned."

"Is that really you speaking to me, mother? Or is that how this blood vine works?"

His words were challenge enough, his eyes narrowed and angry. Young master Draco had come for answers, and would get them regardless. He was his father's son in more ways than one.

She released his hand with a soft squeeze and sighed, "Easier, then, to show you."

She stood and shed her dressing gown as she turned, so that he saw only the slender arch of her bare back and the expanse of her graceful shoulders.

He blanched once he recognized what it was he was seeing. His father had not whipped her bloody last night, as he'd first thought. No, he'd _cut_ her, sliced open her pale skin to leave deep red marks. The older ones had scarred, raised and ruby-hued, to form an intricate vine that unfurled the length of her back. It was monstrously beautiful, repulsively sensual—it took all of his will not to reach out and touch it, so strong was its erotic call, begging for fingertips and tongue to explore its twining tendrils.

"When I am forsworn, the _Sangue Vite_ grows," Narcissa said, rolling her shoulders in a way that sent a ripple the length of her back, moving the blood vine along her skin. "It keeps me from true treachery, a watchdog carved into my flesh. Do you see there, at the base, at the vine's root?"

He nodded, sickened and drawn all at once, and lowly said, "I see it."

"It's his handprint, do you see?" she sounded young and girlish, pleased with this stamp of ownership. "He cut his hand and pressed it there and bade it be."

"Please, mother, cover it," he whispered, unable to look away. "He's carved you up like a piece of meat…"

"He wanted to own me," Narcissa lightly said, pulling her gown back up and fastening it behind her nape, turning to face her pale and trembling son. "I can't blame him. All of the boys wanted me, didn't they? But none of them figured it out, only your father."

She stepped close and cradled him to her, running her hands over his head and shoulders, gathering him close.  
"Your father is a frightening man with frightening secrets, but he is a scion of his kind," she crooned to him. "I deserve nothing less than him, Draco, darling, and count it well worth the cost. And you are just like him, dear one! A prince among mongrel dogs…"

Draco squirmed from her grasp and stood, shaking off the vision of the blood vine and the heat it had pressed upon him.

"Mother," he finally said. "Why did father bind you with it? What harm had you ever done that required such excess?"

"Oh, dearest, it's old, unpleasant nonsense," she said, and the strain was back in her voice. "There was this boy…a few girls, well…_anyhow_, it's all past now, isn't it? Your father took what he learned from that and consulted with _my_ father and it was done. I came of age a few years later and things…changed…But your father had already guessed as much. There are ways to tell, of course—"

"Ways to tell _what_, mother? You're being deliberately obtuse with me, aren't you?"

"No, dearest! I didn't mean—well, ways to tell when a girl turns succubus, of course. Or a boy turns incubus," she said, quick to soothe him. She fit herself to his back and rested her chin on his shoulder, embracing him. "I knew what you were before your father did, I think. He only recently began to truly believe what he was seeing, but I always did. He didn't want it to be true, I think, but there was little help for it, crossing our two lines. The Blacks may throw true only once every few hundred years, but the Malfoys have such aplenty in their line—there was bound to be a result."

"So you think—" he paused and got himself under control, exercising a willpower tempered in his father's dire games and a lifetime's worth of repression. "You think I will be an incubus when I mature?"

"Oh, don't be silly, my dearest!" she laughed, hugging him. "Of _course_ you will be! You're already better than halfway there!"

His fair head dropped, the sentence pronounced twice over.

"Beautiful and talented…my boy, you're not even aware you've been giving the Siren Call for _years_ now, the same as I did when your age," she said, rocking him lightly from side to side. "You've noticed how boys try to curry your favor? How girls can't seem to say no, regardless of how callously you treat them? They are drawn to you, dear one—the boys to the power that you will someday wield, looking to have some portion of it for their own; the girl to that desire inside them, one and all, to be held by something so much better than themselves."

"But not all of them like me, mother," Draco said, though he could think of very few. Aside from Potter and Weasely, most of the other boys either openly tried to befriend him or else bent to his will with little struggle. He'd always assumed it was the power of the Malfoy name, but perhaps there was something to what his mother said. "Hermione Granger would spit in my face if she had half the chance."

She turned him to face her and tenderly cupped his jaw in eerie echo of their kiss. Willpower kept him still, unflinching.

"The girls who dislike you, darling, sense what you are more deeply than their shallow peers. They know that you could take them with no effort and obliterate their sense of self until all they want in the world is _you_," she softly told him. "Drawn as flies to honey, as angels to the throne of God. They would gladly suffer the worst depravities known to man if only you would condescend to touch them…"

His heart quickened to think such things were possible. But he'd seen it at work, hadn't he? With sullen faces and sharp retorts, those girls he'd so beleaguered growing up always did as he bade them without hesitation, affecting irritation but never refusing him a single thing. Even Granger, mudblood, hateful Granger, had reacted strongly the one time he'd been truly harmed in her sight. It was she, his long-time nemesis, who rushed to inform that idiot Hagrid that he must be taken up to the hospital. She'd looked rather startled herself at her own vehemence, but had not swerved from her course of seeing him cared for…

"That, too, is power, Draco," Narcissa whispered, and he was drawn into the limpid pools of her eyes, snared with sudden, unexpected fascination. "Flesh, lust, and longing. Imagine yourself with every luxury, attended by the daughters of your enemies, who would turn on their own kinsmen if you bid it!"

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes encompassed the whole of his world, excited and cruel and remorseless.

And the boy suddenly understood what his father had once seen, what it would mean to have this creature unleashed on the world—a succubus, yes, with all of the power inherent in such, but with a narcissist's total lack of conscience, no comprehension of boundaries or limits. A creature such as that would be as a goddess, killing with kisses and bathing in the blood of those who wronged her.

"Anything you want, you must only ask," she said, her voice hypnotic. "Imagine it, my darling son, how high you will lift the name of Malfoy."

He broke her gaze, too shrewd by far to be snared by her visions of the grandiose. What she spoke of was, of course, possible, but Draco had his father's pragmatism. Every magical creature, every wizard—light or dark—had a balance, an opposite, a thing stronger than themselves. To abandon himself hedonistically to such a path would invite usage by one more powerful. Someone who would control him, bind him, as Lucius had bound Narcissa.

"Mother," he said, carefully, plotting once more. "Why did father suddenly take such an interest in my doings? What concern is it of his with whom I _play_? I would never sully our name, and he knows as much."

"He is worried, just," she assured him, affectionately tracing the sharp arch of his left eyebrow. "The closer you come to gaining your power, the less they will be able to resist you—and you just a boy! What mischief you could make, and at your father's expense. Because our touch is addictive to everyone, to some degree. Some can resist it, and do not pine away after tasting us, others go mad with longing if you do not return to them again and again. The pureblood houses would have more protection from the madness, dearest—it is not sullied blood alone that your father fears, but a mad child wasting away on his doorstep sobbing for you and drawing attention to what you are. We are dangerous in the wrong hands, dearest."

"But if I can do such things, then why would father wish me to marry?" Draco asked, perplexed, not understanding the whole of the puzzle. It was often such with his father's games, too many portions unrevealed, and only his father able to see them all, able to guess the moves of those around him.

"You are the sole Malfoy heir, Draco, dearest," Narcissa solemnly reminded him. "You must produce the next heir…And there is comfort in having a mate, my only one, one who can withstand the draw of your nature, one who will not descend into despair and madness should you leave her for even a few days. Our touch," she sighed, and trailed her fingers over his cheek, which had sharpened with age, revealing more of the fine bone structure beneath. "Can be a blessing or a curse. It is up to you how you use it."

Draco ignored her touch, focusing on the words as he understood them.

"So there are some who can be immune? Like father is to you?"

"It is what allowed him to bind me, my only love," Narcissa said, cocking her head a little to give him a girlish smile, sultry and sweet. She kissed him again, but this time on the forehead, chaste as a saint. "Your power will grow with sex, Draco, darling, and so will the hunger that fuels it. Enjoy yourself, enjoy that _power_, my precious boy, but have a care that the hunger does not consume you in return."


	8. Negotiation

Three in the morning. He could hear the old clock chime out the time in ponderous tolls of its old mechanisms. It was about the oldest thing in the manor, that clock, and stood sentinel in the great hall, dark and imposing and embossed with the Malfoy coat of arms.

Three in the morning, and he stood in the darkness looking down at the sleeping form of his only son and heir. The boy's outline was clear beneath his dark blankets, one pale hand clutching the edge of the coverlet, manicured nails glistening like glass.

"There's so much I would show you, boy," he murmured into the darkness, distracted by the late hour and his own tangled thoughts. "A whole world at the ready to bow at your feet, should you but ask. Should you but reach for that power."

The boy's breath hitched in his sleep and he whimpered, "Mother!" A strangled and plaintive cry, love twisted and grown in on itself to infect its own root. He tossed fitfully onto his side and subsided, no more restful in his sleep than any Malfoy. They would, none of them, lie easy in their beds—what conscience they lacked they made up for with animal instinct, and every instinct cautioned wariness that bordered on paranoia.

"Too young, yet," he reasoned, knowing full well that when he was just fifteen he was already unraveling the mystery of Narcissa Black—a mystery that led him a merry chase for three long years and resulted in the boy himself. Such careful planning, such risks and secrets.

It was not any great affection that caused him to smooth the boy's sleep-wild hair. He but rarely laid hands on his son, and normally only to cuff him for impertinence. Direction, correction, gesturing—all of these things he accomplished with his cane, controlling the boy from a distance that his growing size and maturity would soon render impractical. He was as tall as Narcissa now, and threatened to gain on his sire should he keep growing at such a rate. Still, Lucius smoothed the hair so like his own and regarded a face that held little of Narcissa, and too much of himself. It was the closest thing to love he could feel, this small, unwitnessed affection—moments snatched from the wee hours of the morning to be examined with care against a heart that did not understand such things. But like a wolf with its cub, Lucius cared for the boy, and would not see his son descend into the madness his mother's advances would create. Twenty-five years ago a bargain had been made and sealed with the _Sangue Vite_. Perhaps, for the sake of his son and heir, it was time to renegotiate.

Falling quite naturally back into his usual indifference, Lucius silently retreated from his son's room and made his way to his own where his beautiful wife would be sleeping. He had thought over this problem for years—for fifteen of them, to be exact. From the moment the boy was born, Lord Malfoy had been plotting how best to keep a firm grip on the situation. It required the steely constitution of a soldier and the patience of a saint to keep such a path, but he knew now what he could trade on to make sure his son was safe. He'd kept Narcissa bound to him with the blood vine from the time she was fifteen years old—that was a very long time for one to go without freedom.

He slipped into their bedchamber and paused a moment, just looking at her. A natural tendency to be removed had protected him from her for the most part, the rest being the resistance bred into him through his own forbearers—with a line springing from satyrs and sirens, one did not easily fall prey to the allures of creatures of the same ilk.

She slept lightly, his Lady wife, on her stomach with one slender arm over the side of their bed, the other stacked beneath her cheek. Her hair lay in a glorious spray across the pillow, shining like moonlight in the darkness.

She did not wake when he tugged the coverlet down, pushing it absently to the foot of the bed. The black satin nightgown she wore tied at her nape, leaving the whole of her back bare in all of its supple glory. The blood vine showed stark on her pale skin, art etched in pain with beauty as the result.

He sat next to her and allowed his fingers to trace the old scars that bloomed at the cleft of her buttocks, following the curl of vines to the fresh lines on her upper back. A faint charcoal smudge had unfurled onto her nape and he could see where the tendrils curled off onto her ribs, disappearing beneath her gown. So. Her encounter had not gone unmarked.

Touch-starved as she was, she purred in her sleep, back arching beneath his touch.

The scars were soft as velvet beneath his fingertips, raised up in that perfect ruby-red way peculiar to the _Sangue Vite_.

"Narcissa," he whispered, and her eyes fluttered open.

"Lucius? What is it?" she asked, and sat up suddenly in a panic, crying out, "Is it Draco?"

"Be still," he said, gripping her slender arms. "Draco is as well as can be expected, considering he's had to fend off his own mother's advances."

"He told you," she said, sounding sullen, pouting prettily.

"He hardly had to," Lucius said, his tone dry. ""He was quite distraught. Did he apologize to you?"

She shook her head once, saying softly, "I didn't know you sent him."

Her sapphire eyes remained shuttered and she kept utterly still in his grasp.

"Twenty-five years," he breathed, his hands tightening a little so that she winced and flushed, unconsciously swaying towards him. "And you've kept your oath as best you were able."

"Whatever I have done, I've meant no true harm. There's nothing I wouldn't do for him, Lucius. There's nothing I wouldn't do for _you_," she said, her voice unsteady. Her hunger was such that he could feel it himself, and cursed that his own tiredness lessened his defenses. "The blood vine grows, Lucius—but it is my nature, and cannot be undone."

"No," he murmured. "However, since I first put this mark on you, Narcissa, the game has changed."

She gazed at him, her face solemnly beautiful, and breathed, "Draco."

"I did not swear you where he is concerned—at the time I had no thought for children, only for your own safety and the completion of our pact," Lucius said. "I bound you to uphold the honor of the Malfoy name, which you have. I bound you to serve me faithfully for life, which you have done with more grace than many women I have known. I bound you to do no harm to those who mean us none, and you have not. But I did not ever bind you from consorting with your son, and I knew the moment he was born—the moment you laid eyes on him—that you planned such a thing. It would succeed, too, within the boundaries of your oath as your understood them."

Narcissa swallowed hard, turning aside from his steady grey gaze. Only her husband could pierce her to the quick and see the thoughts lying in her mind as clearly as he saw his own.

"I believe it is time to renew your oath, darling wife," Lucius softly said, cunning and menacing, his fingers sliding from her arms to her back and pressing there at the base of her spine, at the heart of the blood vine, snapping her taut in his loose embrace while she gasped for breath, overcome at once. "The old vows hold true, but the boy will find safe haven with yourself—not as consort, not as lover or mate, but as child, as flesh of your flesh, a young one to be protected and treasured, especially protected from your own licentious nature."

"And what do I gain?" she asked, gasping raggedly, steadying herself by clutching his shoulders, struggling to make sense of his words. "Binding one such as I, Lucius, you must offer like value—you know better than I, darling. It was you who first bound me to serve."

Lucius tried her first, to see if she would name stakes he might accept. This process of bargain and yielding he knew very well, a game played every day of his life.

"What do you wish, Narcissa? What have I ever denied you? I saved you from the horrors of Azkaban, I salvaged your reputation and made you Lady Malfoy, gave you a son whom you treasure—what great lack do you wish reversed, my demanding, selfish wife?"

She answered as he knew she would, twining her limbs around him, flowing into his lap like a silken tigress, purring, "_You_, Lucius. I want _you_. Come to me as a true husband does and I will swear my vows anew and seal it in blood. A consort for a consort."

"One night," he tightly said, fending her off.

"_Every_ night," she countered, and pressed her advantage, sliding her hands into the heavy mass of his hair and running her fingers through it. "For twenty-five years you have taken lovers and left me bereft but for one night a year…I will take nothing less than every night, Lucius. Every night, and no more lovers."

"Do you wish me dead?" he questioned, trapping her wrists and giving her a squeeze that made her gasp, then grin. "You forget what you are, my darling wife—nightly forays into such delights as _you_ hold would be the death even of me."

"Every night," she repeated, unswayed. She licked her lips, and he could feel the hunger building, seeping over to infect him. For a split second he wondered how wise he'd been, to confine her to one night a year—twenty-five years of pent up frustration awaited him, and as his dear wife had so-oft uttered, _she repaid_.

"Every night," he conceded, with the stipulation, "But only from midnight to two. Two turns of the hourglass, my sweet."

"Four," she purred, raking her fingers down his shirt, tearing the collar loose.

"You may live here like a pampered queen, my dear, but I have things I must attend to in the day," Lucius dryly reminded her. "I will give you three hours, no more."

Seeing the implacable look in his eyes, unwilling to push him further and perhaps lose the bargain altogether, Narcissa smiled and said, "Three hours, then. Every night. No more lovers."

Just to test her, Lucius cocked an eyebrow and inquired coldly, "You wouldn't rather have your freedom, my dear? Unbound for a single night?"

That paused her, calculation filling her large blue eyes. Her smile was sly when she lifted her face, and her voice soft when she said, "I would much rather be bound to you, Lucius, than loose for a thousand years—lovers may kiss me and write odes to my beauty, but not a one of them would wield a whip as you do, and to such effect. No, my darling, I will remain ever yours, if only you will treat me as I deserve."

"You mean beaten within an inch of your life?" Lucius haughtily asked, managing to look faintly bored even as she twined around him—his own living blood vine, sinking tendrils deep.

"I swear, Lucius, that I will protect our son and keep him safe, and safely chaste of me, if only you will give me what I ask," she whispered, and bit down on his earlobe, earning herself a sharp cuff of reprimand.

"Then you shall have it," he softly said.

The ritual enacted twenty-five years before repeated itself—the wounded hand, the blood vine refreshed, the new lines carved deeply onto her nape and over her ribs. He bound her to her word and more, exacting tighter and more precise vows to which she agreed unthinking, focused on the pain and her own long-sought reward. Twenty-five years and only one night each year to satiate that chasm of desire—the rest taken out in torture that pushed her to further release than she'd ever imagined possible, but giving her nothing of her husband's own coveted flesh.

But now she would have him, every night.


	9. Cold As Stone?

It seemed that there was something he was supposed to remember, but it flitted at the edges of his memory, chased into shadow by the slow crest of pleasure echoing up through his nerve-endings. It seemed his gaze was drawn time and again to the hourglass on the mantle. It had run half its course, and he dimly recalled turning it twice already, half-heartedly, distracted by what he was doing.

'_What was I supposed to do when it runs through_?' he asked himself, and bit his tongue when her body twisted beneath him, blood filling his mouth. The question faded and he gave a tug to the chain on her collar that momentarily stilled her. Her skin glowed beneath him, glowed through the dark splatters of her blood, and her eyes—when he caught flashes of them in the mirror that sat before her—sparkled with a fierce sapphire light. The bit was clenched between her white teeth, pressing cruelly into the corners of her mouth, the buckle rubbing a raw patch against her cheek. But there was ecstasy there on her visage, in the rhythmic pulse of her body, squeezing him with every lash of the crop in his hand. Blood traced delicate patterns down her slender arms, pooling against the heavy cuffs that kept her fastened to the headboard.

She bucked back against him, searing his flesh with pleasure that made him nearly double over. He dropped over her, the chain and crop clenched tightly in his hands, her slick back pressed to his belly. She bore up under his weight and her lithe legs folded back around his driving hips, a position defying the laws of the physical. And still he could not get close enough, shoving into her with such force that he threatened to move right _through_ her—but nothing quenched that desire, and the pleasure was overwhelming, sweat coursing freely down his high cheekbones. He released her chain, released the crop, and gripped her slick hips, feeling her clench tight again around him, her breath coming out in a muffled scream. He lost himself in it, sinking his teeth deeply into her creamy white shoulder as he came.

He'd lost count of how many times. She had that power, it kept growing the longer he touched, kissed her, ran his hands and tongue along her flesh—she dripped with power, was saturated in it, and every time he spent himself inside her, she turned, cupped him in her warm little palm, and he wanted her all over again.

He fell back from her, exhausted but euphoric. He lay panting at the foot of the bed, and faintly waved his fingers to release her bonds, missing the touch of her skin. She was on him in an instant, slipping up to straddle his waist and nuzzle her perfect mouth into his throat. He felt her sharp teeth on his skin and chuckled, sliding his hands along the smooth planes of her back, up over her shoulders and nape to tangle in the silky skein of her hair. She lifted her face and kissed him, tasting his blood, her tongue finding the raw place where he'd bitten himself. He held her hard to him, feeling her fragile bones complain beneath the crush of his arms, and that, too, was heady. He never wanted that pleasure to stop, that breathless, intoxicating reaction of flesh.

"Again," she panted, kissing him roughly, her small hands clasping his face. "Oh, my dearest, _again_!"

He could not imagine ever denying her anything, and her words quickened him so that he had her there, riding astride in his lap, wild as a siren and twice as delectable. She sank her nails into his flesh, sobbing, sharing the pleasure she felt so that he felt it twofold, bordering on agony—but it was sweet, sweet agony that he would do anything to feel.

It was only just spent between them when something in his mind clicked like a switch, falling upon him as the last grain of sand fell through the hourglass. The strangling euphoria of his wife's touch faded, warded by his caution and usual immunity, which came back in the wake of his spell. He remembered casting it before he gave his wife her due, a spell that would render him vulnerable to her wiles, completely within her power for the three hours he'd promised her.

She felt it, and sat back, still astride him, her eyes solemn. She glowed with power, dripped it from her skin—power stolen from the powerful feelings generated through their shared sexual exploits. It was her ability as a succubus, drawing it thusly.

And it was his right as her husband and master to take it back.

"Narcissa," he murmured, and loosely opened his arms in a gesture of welcome she did not often receive.

She fell against his chest and willingly gave up that hoarded power, letting him drink it from her lips so that it crackled like static electricity between them, filling him so that he felt he might explode with it. He took it, every drop, every tingling portion of it, and when she had no more to give, he pushed her off of him and got up, sweeping his robe around himself.

He felt wrung out but still thrilling with power and the satisfaction that violent sex always gave him. There was no depravity he could not or would not demand of her that she would deny, and it made her his ideal bed-mate.

That, however, was the glaring problem he had with allowing her such reign every night—becoming too used to it, _wanting_ what she offered. He was Lucius Malfoy, who wanted and needed no one, and he had no intentions of letting that change.

Narcissa came to him, naked as the day she was born, so luminous with beauty that it still had the ability to pause him, even after twenty-some years of marriage. He'd always been very good at covering his reactions, however, and managed to give her a look of cool disdain.

She gripped his hand and lifted it to her cheek, still cloaked in sweat and the pink rivulets of blood it had watered. She sighed over his knuckles and kissed his rings, sinking to her knees. It was not often one saw Narcissa Malfoy humbled, turned for a moment from her own vanity and self-absorption. He stared down at her, astonished, fleetingly glad that her downcast face could not register the shock he could not cover.

"I will serve you such all the days of your life," she sighed, and it was a truer confession of love from one such as she than saying the words which were lies. "And give you gladly what power I garner from it—after all of these years, Lucius, have you truly _never_ understood what you stood to gain of me?"

He pulled her to her feet, clasping her miniscule waist to steady her. She'd shed blood and more this night, and was weak from it, giddy with pleasure and exhausted in more ways than he could imagine.

She lifted her sapphire eyes to his, shadowed by violet bruises, her lovely mouth bloodied at the corners from the cruel bite of the bit. Her hair fell over her shoulders in rippling white-blond waves, from beneath which her perfectly full breasts peeked, nipples brick red from chafing and his cruel, demanding teeth. The lines of the blood vine spilled over her delicate ribcage, tiny leaves etched delicately into her white flesh. But it had grown no more since she'd claimed her kiss from their son. She looked fragile and utterly undone, breakable in so many ways—and he realized how easy it was to dismiss her, to think that since she thought only of herself, he need not think of her himself at all. Looking at her shadowed face and the naked need written there, he realized he'd been remiss to discount that she was _human_, and needed something to cling to. It did not surprise him, now, that she had fixated so whole-heartedly on their son. He'd left her no recourse, in the end.

"Come, 'Cissa," he softly said, surprising them both with the nickname he'd called her as a child and had never called her since. He drew her gently against him and pulled her into the washroom alongside him. "A bath and then bed."

"Yes," she said, her voice breathy with nervous pleasure, afraid he would turn away from her as he had always done in the past. He alone could do that to her, make her wonder about herself and her effect on him. "A bath and bed would be wonderful, my darling."

He did not smile at her, but that did not make his attention less for it, and he understood that more had changed that night than he'd negotiated for. But whatever the cost, whatever became of him—even if it was the slow loss of his sanity to the pleasures of his wife's body—so long as the boy grew up safe and sure, Lucius Malfoy was pleased.


End file.
